“The art of letters will come to an end before AD 2000. I shall survive as a curiosity,” said Ezra Pound. Whether he was a clairvoyant who could predict the fate of the art of letter-writing is still to be contested, but his prophecy did come true.

No doubt the 21st century is the age of information boom: SMS, emails, social networking sites among others, but it has unfortunately, sounded a death knell for the much-loved art of yore: letter writing.

Gone are the days when lovers professed their undying love to each other through letters. Feelings are now expressed through SMS, using emoticons. The home-sick hosteller no longer writes home, he e-mails!

The coming of the internet and mobiles has shrunk the world, but at the same time, it has done away with the personal touch that was there in communication. I may sound old-fashioned, but I think the feeling of reading a letter, holding an inland in your hand is unbeatable.

Though it takes a fraction of a second to write an email, but the time used to pen a letter is actually time invested in some meaningful activity.

All of us have time constraints and so we want to do things in a jiffy. But in our quest to be fast, we have failed to see that technology has, despite bridging the distance between bodies, increased the distance between hearts. I still remember the days when I used to receive letters from my cousins, each syllable, the handwriting, captured my imagination.

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